I have been wanting to make a soup full of SuperFoods. What do you suggest?

Hope, Sugarlove has some good advice about making your own stock. That is important to the base of a soup.. it can really make or break it. Many soups I eat might seem very strange to you but I can think of one in particular that I make you might like. Chicken soup…

I cook a whole chicken, 2 large whole onions, 2-3 whole carrots, 1 whole bulb of peeled garlic (keep the cloves whole), 1 whole potato, and a few whole turnips together in a mixture of chicken stock, a little salt and water. When the chicken is cooked I remove it to cool but keep cooking the vegetables. After the vegetables are cooked through I put the whole vegetables through a blender with the soup liquid. Return to the pot. Add some parsley, basil, and fresh ground pepper. Cook again.

Meanwhile debone the chicken. And rip it into large strips. Add some raw linguine or rice to some of the soup in a small pan. When it is almost cooked add strips of breast meat back. Garnish with a little more fresh ground pepper just before serving.

I freeze the extra soup base (sans chicken, sans past of course). I freeze a little of the chicken meat separately so its available to add back later. The rest of the chicken I use in a chicken salad or stir fry or whatever. I take the chicken carcass and boil the heck out of it for several hours making a new stock to use next time.. then freeze it.

I realize that I probably am loosing a lot of nutrients by cooking the vegetables for such a long time.. but this is such a hearty soup that my family loves.

I make a lot of other soups that don’t cook the ingredients this long. I use a lot of tofu, soybean paste, chili paste, seaweeds and fresh greens. Let me know if any of that interests you.

I love plain tomatoes with salt and pepper! I have them in the fridge and I love them. I just have to make a concious effort to include them in my menu every day. I tried oven roasting some cherry tomatoes with my asparagus in olive oil, salt & pepper. Now, that was dee-lish!

Olivia - Do you store your tomatoes in the fridge? I don't know if anyone else has already mentioned this, but tomatoes do better unrefrigerated. I've known this but read an actual explanation the other day and can I remember now - of course not! Maybe I read it in the SuperFoods book? Anyway, your tomatoes will be much tastier and retain their structure better if you leave them on the counter.

I'll be back later to list my SuperFood "challenges."

__________________Mary

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
Eleanor Roosevelt

"If it's a good day, enjoy it. If it's a bad day, learn from it."
A good friend

Breaking Free, I have some tomatoes on the window sill as we 'speak', but the ones that my hubby's friend gave us from his garden, I put in the fridge. They were very ripe and I didn't know if sitting them out would just destroy them or not. It's 100 degrees and humid here! Should they be taken out, even if they are riper than ripe? Will they be okay?

One thing to do to make sure you are getting enough Super foods and variety is to take a list of superfoods with you when you go to the grocery store.

The thing I'm working on currently is variety with superfoods. Some superfoods are staples in my diet including brown rice, whole wheat, soy, tomatoes, carrots, beans, nuts, olive oil, berries, dark chocolate, garlic, onions, chicken and yogurt. I am lessening the amount of meat we are eating so chicken is becoming less and less but really either we'll eat fish or poultry.

I read that if you refrigerate sweet potatoes it changes the taste. I have noticed a difference now that I no longer refrigerate. I still refrigerate onions!

"After purchase, sweet potatoes should be kept in a cool (55&#176;F to 60&#176;F), dry place, such as a cellar, pantry, or garage--never in the refrigerator, where they may develop a hard core and an "off" taste. In fact, when sweet potatoes are stored at low temperatures, their natural sugars turn to starch, which does nothing to enhance their flavor.

Sweet potatoes will keep for a month or longer if stored at 55&#176;F; if kept at normal room temperature, they should be used within a week of purchase."

I have trouble getting citrus in. I just have never gotten into the habit, wihich is strange since my mom always had a bowl of orange and grapefruit in the fridge. She'd come home from the store and cut them open (like you do a grapefruit for breakfast) and scoop all the fruit into the bowl. It gets nice and juicy and is good. Hmmm, I should do this. I don't eat pomegrante, but I do eat prunes. I like to simmer them with a slice of lemon (or orange - duh!) and serve them at breakfast. DH just puts them on his cereal like any othe fruit. I like mine with a spoonful of yogurt.

__________________Pat

"Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think." Christopher Robin to Pooh

Umm, yeah. I also refrigerate onions and potatoes, mostly because it's a convenient place to store them. Should I not be?

I'd always heard that storing potatoes in the fridge causes the starch in the potato to convert to sugar. I think the theory for onions is that the extra moisture in the fridge can cause the onion to rot....I keep my onions in a basket, but do sometimes double-wrap a partially used onion and store it in the fridge for a few days. They last OK, but do go kind of weird in the fridge....sort of spongey. I do know that, however you choose to store them, potatoes and onions shouldn't be stored together - when they're near each other, they produce gases that can cause each of them to spoil quickly.

Based on observation (my mom's way of doing things) and experience, you should avoid refrigerating potatoes, onions (although I do refrigerate if I have leftover raw onion), fresh corn on the cob, acorn/butternut, etc. squashes, tomatoes, among other things. Just try not refrigerating things you have been and see how you like them. If you don't like them, go back to the old way.

Here are a few of the SuperFoods I'd like to get more of on a regular basis:
beans
berries (frozen when not in season)
kale/swiss chard/cabbage
honey
wheat germ & ground flaxseed
orange bell pepper (the colored peppers are $$, though)
pumpkin
wild salmon & sidekicks
tea
turkey
walnuts (I eat lots of the sidekicks, though)

I already eat many of these things, just not regularly. I do things sloowly so I'll be phasing them in over time.

__________________Mary

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
Eleanor Roosevelt

"If it's a good day, enjoy it. If it's a bad day, learn from it."
A good friend

Okay, so I looked in my mom's fridge and there are onions in there! But there are also onions in a basket on the kitchen floor. I don't put my onions in the fridge unless I've sliced some of it. Is that okay to do?

Sweet potatoes, I've always kept in a basket out of the fridge. I never heard of their starch turning to sugar in the fridge! But I have made the mistake (several times) of storing potatoes with onions and always wondered why they BOTH went bad so quickly!!!

You're fine to put sliced onion in the fridge - that's what I do, too. As I mentioned, it will often go a bit soft or kind of spongey, but it's still fine to use - the texture is just a little different. I just never bother with whole onions because I find they do go bad faster if kept in the fridge.